


In That Will I Now Abide

by novamare



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Casual Murder, M/M, Power Bottom Moriarty, Russian Roulette, ish, submissive sebastian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 07:46:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10329590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novamare/pseuds/novamare
Summary: "He drew me closer to his side, I sought his will to know,And in that will I now abide, Wherever he leads I'll go."Jim finds a drunk Sebastian stumbling out of club in the rain and takes him home to train him in the fine art of submission.





	

Something was pounding, throbbing, destroying him, and Sebastian wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol, the club’s pulsing music, or the rain coming down in bullets (hollow-pointed, the ones Sebastian preferred). Everything hurt viscerally, reducing Sebastian to the bare animal under all the brain matter and repressed emotion. He stumbled through the back hall of the club, where the toilets sat exposed to the life of the club, no stall doors, no stalls, no sink. He tripped on nothing and fell into the emergency exit, which gave no resistance nor alarm and opened, spitting Sebastian out into the back alley. He landed on his hands and knees and scraped both badly. And then he was drenched within moments, cold and shivering and a monster in the night, his blood mixing with the rain and dissolving into the dark pavement.

He’d had more drinks than he could remember. He hadn’t paid the tab. He was going to vomit.

Whiskey was Sebastian’s poison of choice. Anything with whiskey, anything to forget. To ignore the bite inside him that begged, demanded, craved. He had taken his first breath of hell in London as a child, a kid of the system, belt marks across his back, scars healed jagged and scared. He’d killed his first man at age fifteen.

Sebastian vomited up the contents of his stomach, the dark alcohol swirling in the rain and fading away. He’d gotten away with it, not even a slap on the wrist.

The next first breath of hell had been government sanctioned. They’d given him a uniform and a gun and then he was killing men all day long, and the bite that had loved him so gently while he’d been pummeling in Mr. Pugs’s skull in returned and made itself at home in his gut. He laid on his belly in the sand and made corpses out of people that were not people in his mind; to him they were targets and nothing more. They deserved the deaths he gave them, with his hollow-pointed bullets that mushroomed upon impact and shredded brains to slush. Every kill, and the bite ate him away.

Struggling to his feet, Sebastian eyed the road that the alley led to. It was flooding and poorly lit, just another street in industrial London. He was starving, he needed more. More whiskey, more blood. They were the same to him. He stumbled like a drunkard—he was quickly becoming one—toward the main street, and a rat scrambled out from under his heavy boots just as Sebastian made it out of the alley. It was a small accomplishment, a mission complete by any means necessary. Those were the rules he played by.

He’d been sent home after an altercation at base camp. It was sexual in nature, against regulation, against everything inside him but the bite that devoured his commanding officer. It was his third first breath of hell.

The street was blurry in Sebastian’s eyes, but two very bright headlamps approaching very quickly made him blink again and again, the world becoming clear for a moment before hazing over again. The splash from the car’s tires hit his already soaked body and sent him backward, directly onto his arse, scraping his elbows along the way. Everything hurt viscerally.

“Get in.”

The back window facing Sebastian rolled down and he could see from the ground a sharp-looking man in a pristine suit. The water rolling from the roof of the car seemed to avoid him at every chance. The car was a deep, inky black, like the man’s lapels and eyes. And Sebastian blinked again, dull and lazy and drunk.

“Get. In.” The man’s voice had a growl to it. Something dangerous. And the bite inside Sebastian was chomping at the bit, nearly dragging him toward the car on his hands and knees, crawling like a child toward his father and hoping to see the pride in his eyes. Sebastian rolled over onto his knees and vomited again. The man in the car sneered.

There had been a fourth first breath of hell once Sebastian had gotten back to London, a city he hated but couldn’t avoid no matter how hard he tried.

Sebastian stood up slowly, and to his credit, the man in the black car said nothing. Until Sebastian gave a slurred, “Fuck off.” Against every instinct in him, he backed away and turned toward home, walking slowly and unsteadily as the rain massaged his shoulders and pulled the tips of his blond hair into his eyes. He’d let it grow too long.

Number four had involved a noose and some pills just in case.

The car followed him, and anger was rolling off the man in the back seat in waves. It rankled Sebastian’s drunken haze.

“Get in the car, Moran.”

He had failed. He had been too heavy. The noose had been tied around a ceiling fan. The scars from falling, and the blades of the fan falling with him, into him, had only barely healed. The pills he had already swallowed had made him hazy like alcohol did, but he’d woken up hours later, hurting and alone and alive.

Sebastian stopped at that, staring at the Irishman, for that’s what the accent was, with a confused frown. “How d’you know my name?” he mumbled. The bite was chewing again, lusting. The man said nothing, just motioned his head vaguely toward the door, which gave a faint click as it unlocked from the inside.

This was going to be his fifth first breath of hell. Sebastian could feel it. Could taste it. He stumbled to the car and struggled to open the door. When he managed it, he fell into the car head-first, landing in the man’s lap and drenching his otherwise pristine suit. The man gave a disgusted scoff and pushed Sebastian into the foot well, where Sebastian stayed despite the discomfort. He could see the man’s shoes in detail. They were so black, so perfectly polished.

Commander Gregory would have been proud of him. Sebastian would have licked his boots if Gregory had asked it of him. He would have done anything. He could still remember the hatred in Julian Gregory’s eyes as they stood at the hearing. Commander Gregory was the one to preside.

“Sebastian Moran,” the Irishman said as the car sped away through the industrial complex, “the best sniper the Crown has seen in decades. Cat got your tongue? Or perhaps there’s a cock keeping it busy.”

Commander Gregory had been his first, not counting Mr. Pugs or his friends. Commander Gregory, with the red hair and the green eyes and the ruddy skin. Freckles everywhere. Everywhere.

Sebastian’s jaw clenched hard enough to set the nerves in his teeth afire. “How d’you—”

“I know everything, Tiger.” The Irishman gave the hint of a smile. A dangerous, feral smile just barely hidden by a politic and well-tailored façade. The Irishman reminded Sebastian of Commander Gregory, except the Irishman was black as sin or gunmetal. Black hair, black eyes, black suit, all black except for the stark contrast of his pale skin and starched white shirt, which met at the collar where a slim black tie knotted around the Irishman’s throat. There wasn’t a hint of hair on the man’s jaw; shaven and crisp, he was the picture of sleek perfection.

But he was small. Much smaller than Sebastian, even with Sebastian laying at the Irishman’s feet. Small in stature, at least. Sebastian, even in his drunk and pliant state, didn’t imagine anything else about the man was small. Not the ego—Sebastian knew men like the Irishman. They were fatal, they were dynamite, they were wicked and so sexy Sebastian couldn’t stand it.

The Irishman kicked Sebastian in the jaw, hard enough to bruise but not hard enough to dislocate it, and said, “My name is James Moriarty. Jim. Well, Moriarty to you. Unless you accept my offer, in which case it’s Boss.”

“Offer?”

“You catch on quick. I knew there was a reason I wanted you,” Moriarty teased devilishly, pressing the sole of his immaculately shined and unspeakably expensive shoe against Sebastian’s lips. “Don’t talk, darling, when I’m talking. It’s rude.” At that, Moriarty glanced out the window, into the pouring rain. Sebastian could see the top of the eye and none of the river or the rest of the skyline from his vantage.

Moriarty checked his watch and scowled at it before knocking at the divider that separated the front seat and the driver from the back. A small sliding door opened, and Moriarty gave clipped instructions to, “Make it quick or pack your bags for Serbia.” The car sped up, lurching Sebastian against Moriarty’s legs and nearly making him vomit again.

“So,” Moriarty finally said, his voice business but dark and melting, “I need a sniper. You’re the best in Europe. Perhaps in the world. Work for me and you’ll never have to work another day in your life.”

That had never been Gregory’s promise. Gregory—Sebastian couldn’t call him Julian, on principle—had been as harsh as Mr. Pugs, except instead of belts and shame, Gregory dealt in knives and guns and anger. Gregory had worked him to the bone, and that was how Sebastian needed it. They were never a couple. They were a commanding officer and his soldier who would do anything to please. Anything to keep busy. Anything to keep the bite at bay.

“Of course, you’ll have to stop drinking to such an extent. It’s unsightly.”

It was good for Moriarty, then, that Sebastian was already beginning to sober. He had to piss like a racehorse, but his head was less foggy now. Clear enough to realize he was bleeding on the edge of the leather seat, where his skinned and scraped knees were pressed. Perhaps thankfully the leather was black like the rest of the car, and the blood settled invisible into the leather.

All of a sudden, the car came to a complete halt, and Moriarty opened the door and stepped out like a king under an umbrella the driver had ready.

“Hurry up,” the Irishman snapped, and Sebastian watched errant raindrops roll off the glossy surface of Moriarty’s pristine shoes. He clambered out of the car, but there was no umbrella for him. His clothes and hair had dried somewhat during the ride, but now he was drenched again. His own heavy boots were less pristine and they darkened at first in points and then entirely where the water hit them. His jeans were torn in places from overuse rather than fashion, and the tight white shirt he’d put on to visit the club was now skintight, transparent. All his scars were on show, all his tattoos.

He hadn’t gone to the club to get lucky. He’d gone mostly for the alcohol and to watch pretty people writhe against other pretty people. He was a sniper, and his preferred perspective was third person. On the outside, looking in. There was a voyeurism about it he lived for, that began to satisfy the bite inside him.

Moriarty was already walking toward a block of luxury flats, not looking back to see if Sebastian was following. He could have made his escape, could have turned and run the other way, but Sebastian didn’t. He followed along and breathed in the warm, wet air.

The driver stopped at the door while Moriarty and Sebastian entered the building, Moriarty tapping in codes at every door to unlock what Sebastian imagined was the king’s castle.

Moriarty led them to a flat that was as big as it was expensive, where the foyer itself was the size of Sebastian’s bedroom at his bedsit. The walls were a dark wine red, and the furnishings were all a sleek black with silvery ornaments. Further into the flat was a sitting room, with a long couch across a glass coffee table from two black leather chairs, one of which was clearly Moriarty’s. There was still a teacup sitting on the coffee table in front of the chair, and a book laid face down on the arm, marking his spot for later. It was almost quaint.

“Have you considered my offer?” Moriarty had gone into the kitchen, which was lighter in color but not atmosphere, and put on a kettle for two.

Sebastian didn’t drink tea. “It’s illegal. I’m not military anymore.”

At that, Moriarty grinned wickedly. “Oh yes, I’m aware. I’m very aware. I’ve read your discharge papers. Julian Gregory, was it? You took the bullet for the both of you, is that right?”

His chest clenched up, and the bite began eating him alive, devouring everything that kept him sane. Moriarty had said it earlier: he knew everything. It almost set Sebastian at ease, except he couldn’t ignore the ache consuming him from inside. He could see Gregory’s face faintly in his memory. He’d worked so hard to block it out. Could feel the sand whip across his skin in the wind. Could smell the hot days and the long nights with a long gun against his shoulder, timing his breaths and heartbeats for the perfect shot.

“Do you have a toilet?”

“Down the hall on the right. Don’t try anything funny.”

Sebastian turned and hurried to the small room on the other side of the flat. He locked himself inside and, after taking a piss, splashed his face with cold water and slumped down against the door. His drunken stupor was quickly fading, and he was beginning to wonder what exactly he’d just gotten himself into.

The bite was still gnawing, chewing through the muscle and gristle that made up Sebastian’s body. It needed to be fed, and Sebastian’s hands shook with the need to hold a gun again. It was wrong! It was illegal! He had left that life back in Afghanistan! But oh, how sweet was the first air after dangling from a ceiling fan, even with pain everywhere else! Adrenaline kept the pain at bay until the cravings returned. He was an addict, he realized then in Moriarty’s toilet. And starving his addiction was only starving what was eating him alive in return.

He found Moriarty in the kitchen again, now with two white porcelain cups. One was filled with steaming, milky tea, and the other was empty, sitting next to a full French press. Moriarty had known. Sebastian embraced it.

“I’ll do it.”

Moriarty smiled, not warmly but not as wickedly as before. Sebastian imagined this was the closest to friendly the Irishman got. Fond was the word for it. Moriarty was fond of him. Despite everything he knew. Sebastian felt warm from inside as he poured his coffee and took the first sip. The bite knew what was coming, even if Sebastian didn’t.

“There’s a rifle in the coat closet. Go get it,” Moriarty ordered as he sipped his tea, looking sharp and gentle at the same time. The softness there was like a mirage in the desert. There, and then not. Only to reemerge once Sebastian turned his back.

Sebastian set his coffee aside and obeyed, finding in the closet a gun he was intimately familiar with. It was, down to every scratch and nick, his gun. The one that had helped him kill hundreds of men in Afghanistan and fantasize about killing hundreds more. Sebastian glanced at Moriarty, who was trying to hide a proud smirk, and said, “Should I ask?”

“No. Never ask.”

Breaking the gun apart, Sebastian found that it had been immaculately cared for. Not a speck of dust was anywhere to be seen. He put it back together the way he could do blindfolded and in his sleep. It was then he noticed a magazine on the shelf in the closet. He grabbed it and slid it home out of habit or instinct, and rested the weapon on his shoulder as he turned back to Moriarty, expectant.

Moriarty gave a short nod. “Go look out the window. Two o’clock, the block of flats across the street. The open window.”

Sebastian crossed the room and stopped in front of a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows that showed the most beautiful view of London. Had the city ever been so beautiful to Sebastian before? He quickly found the window in question. An old woman, maybe ninety or so, was watching television peacefully.

The bite inside Sebastian bit harder. It begged for his fifth first breath of hell, which might fill him and satisfy him finally. He knew it would not. There would always be another bite, another hunger. He shifted his stare out the corner of his eye to Moriarty, who had moved to sit in his chair and sip his tea and read his book in peace. Sebastian’s heartrate spiked and then dropped to almost nothing. His body was ready for a kill shot. He hadn’t even gotten the order yet, but Sebastian knew what Moriarty wanted from him.

He couldn’t. Or, rather, he could. And that was even more dangerous.

“What now?” he asked, his voice hoarse and quiet.

Moriarty scowled at him. “Don’t ask. Do.”

Sebastian snapped. He turned to the Irishman with a sharp growl and said, “I need an order, _Boss_. I don’t kill for the fun of it.” Oh, what a glorious lie. Sebastian could see that Moriarty knew it was a lie, and Moriarty smiled gently. _Gently_. Oh, what a glorious façade. At least they both played the same game. It was no level playing field, but at least it was the same game.

“That’s Mrs. Pugs. Remember her? No, of course you wouldn’t. That’s Mr. Pugs’s dear old mother. She went to his funeral,” Moriarty said without looking up from his book. “She hates you, but she raised an abuser. Kill her.”

“No.”

The book snapped closed, the tea splashed on the coffee table, and Moriarty was on his feet, his hand around Sebastian’s neck and glaring up into Sebastian’s eyes. “Listen to me, Moran. Either you leave here as my loyal Tiger, or you do not leave at all. Is that clear?”

Sebastian couldn’t breathe, his brain was taking him back to number four, then to number three, number two, all the way back to smashing Mr. Pugs’s skull into his brain. He could never breathe while taking his first breaths of hell. It was paradoxical like that. Moriarty’s grip around his neck, stopping the blood from flowing to his head, stopping the air from reaching his lungs, all from this man half his size and with no rifle. Moriarty got closer, and it was only when the Irishman’s thigh pressed against his crotch that Sebastian realized he was getting hard. Moriarty smirked and pushed Sebastian backward.

“I’ll take that as being clear. Now. Kill her.”

Sebastian did.

He lined up at the window, settled his rifle against his shoulder and rested the barrel on the window ledge and began to school his breathing, school his heartbeat. When his heart rate was slow enough to count, Sebastian took one last breath, exhaled, and pulled the trigger. There was the gunshot, and then there was nothing. A clap of thunder came in just after, and Sebastian collapsed to his knees in relief at the cover. He watched the woman fall over in her chair, and Sebastian took his fifth first breath of hell. The bite, at least for now, was satisfied.

“May I ask a question?” He didn’t look at Moriarty. His eyes were fixed on the dead mother of his childhood abuser. She deserved it, he tried to convince himself. She had hurt him by proxy. The more he thought about it, the better he felt. The shame that came with the bite faded little by little, and when he finally looked at Moriarty, the Irishman was beaming with pride. 

“Of course, Tiger. What is it, darling?”

“Are they hollow-point bullets?”

A hand brushed across his shoulder blade, and Moriarty’s head was next to his, breathing across his cheek. “The only kind you use,” Moriarty whispered into Sebastian’s ear, pressing a gentle kiss, something Sebastian would have never imagined from the Irishman, to the high point of his cheekbone. Then Moriarty was gone, back in his chair, reading and sipping his tea as if nothing had happened. Sebastian breathed heavily and began to care after his rifle, making sure the single shot hadn’t dirtied it.

Then, and Sebastian wasn’t expecting it, Moriarty said, “Come here, Tiger.” He sounded almost playful, as if the murder in his name had made him giddy like a child. All the fire that had nearly strangled Sebastian earlier was gone, and Sebastian set the rifle aside, then moving to brace his hands on his thighs to take a few more deep breaths of recollect himself. Breathing felt harder than it should have. Felt like the air was tearing him apart from the inside, just another new pain like the bite or like the shame that made Sebastian the walking disaster that he was. 

“Come here,” Moriarty repeated, sharper.

Sebastian obeyed, rocking to his feet and stepping across the sitting room to stand directly in front of Moriarty, who was still buried in his book. The teacup was empty, and Sebastian wondered if he was supposed to refill it. He knew better now than to ask.

“Kneel.”

When Sebastian knelt, his head was at the height of Moriarty’s chest, so Sebastian stared blankly at the silver tie pin that kept Moriarty together.

A hand reached out and shuffled through Sebastian’s hair, gently at first, and then gripped his hair tight enough to burn. Moriarty pulled Sebastian’s head to rest on his thigh, which was half the size of Sebastian’s own. Sebastian didn’t resist, and instead found himself contemplating the fragility of Moriarty’s body, in direct contradiction to the strength of his personality. His power. Moriarty was a small man by any account, a whole head shorter than Sebastian and even in his pressed suit only half the breadth.

The suit smelled like starch, where the trouser legs had been pressed, but Moriarty smelled darker. Sebastian closed his eyes as the hand in his hair began to draw little patterns on his scalp.

“You did very well, darling,” Moriarty murmured, twirling the longer hair at the top of Sebastian’s head. “You may call me Boss now. Do not speak unless spoken to unless you have a question. Then you may ask to ask it, the way you did earlier. You have such an instinct, Tiger!” The Irishman was gushing, Sebastian realized. A sharp pride bloomed where the bite usually did.

Sebastian grit his teeth in shame at the feeling but said nothing.

Moriarty then pushed Sebastian’s head off this lap and said, “I would like to reward you for being so good.” Moriarty set his book aside and revealed a wicked smile. Dangerous and not at all giddy. Calculating, Sebastian thought. Moriarty was planning something. Something like fear, or perhaps it was adrenaline, hit Sebastian’s veins, and he swallowed heavily. He could hear through the heavy rain a siren headed to Mrs. Pugs’s flat. Someone had found her, then. Moriarty didn’t seem worried.

“Get up. Take off your clothes. Is that clear?”

Sebastian hesitated but said, “Yes, Boss.” He went for his boots while he was still kneeling, untying the knots and pulling them off, setting them aside. His socks were still damp, and they came off next. Then Sebastian stood up, towering over the still sitting Irishman, and kept steady eye-contact, almost a challenge, as he unbuttoned the tight white shirt he was wearing. One button at a time, he could see Moriarty’s eyes following the growing V of skin that began at his collar and finally fell all the way to his navel, where a whorl of coarse hair disappeared under the waistband of his jeans.

He took off the shirt and folded it, setting it on the coffee table next to Moriarty’s empty tea cup. His chest and back were exposed. All his scars on display, his tattoos. One was a military stick and poke that Commander Gregory had given him one hot and balmy night. 

They’d been laying together in Gregory’s tent, about ten miles from base. Sebastian’s head on Gregory’s chest. “You can call me Julian,” Gregory had said with a teasing flick to Sebastian’s bare ribs. Sebastian had laughed but hadn’t said anything. Especially not Gregory’s name. The evening had progressed, and after they had fucked, laying in the candlelight, Sebastian had asked for something to remember it by. Gregory, not for the first time, had given it to him.

Then there were the scars. Some from Mr. Pugs, some from Sebastian’s otherwise scrappy childhood, and some from the blades of the fan that had fallen on him, gouging him open but leaving him dreadfully alive.

Moriarty was staring, impatient. “All of it, Moran.”

All of it. Sebastian frowned. What was he doing? Who had he become? Committing murder for an Irishman who knew everything about him, despite the fact that Sebastian knew nothing about him except a name and the power that was obvious.

He obeyed. His fingers shook—painfully, unexpectedly—as he unbuttoned and unzipped his torn and frayed jeans. They slipped down his narrow hips and revealed that he wasn’t wearing anything under them. He took a slow, deep breath, in and out, the bite growing again, and pushed the jeans down. They pooled at his ankles and he stepped out of them, bending to pick them up, fold them, and set them next to his shirt on the coffee table.

Moriarty’s eyes scanned him up and down. Then a smile emerged. Still dangerous. Wicked. Completely unholy. Sebastian closed his eyes, unable to watch his own appraisal. Shame, shame, shame ate into him. Where was the pride that he had felt earlier?

If only the fan hadn’t fallen. If only the pills were stronger.

“Turn around.”

Sebastian did.

The scars on his back were worse. Belt marks, puncture wounds where the belt buckles had hit him. A great tattoo spanned his shoulder blades like wings. It was a thorny vine, no roses, in a tangle of the past and present. At the base of his back, just where the rise of his arse began, were two small dimples, the only perfect things on his entire body, and he couldn’t even see them.

Moriarty hummed in pleasure. “That’s very good, Tiger. Look at me.”

The first thing Sebastian noticed was the tent in Moriarty’s trousers. It was not large, but neither was it too small for the man’s frame. It looked, the way most of Moriarty did if you didn’t know him, very average. Sebastian looked down at his own cock, which was well-sized to his own body, and was not surprised but still ashamed to find it beginning to swell, just enough for him to feel the pressure in his groin. There was dried blood on his knees where he’d scraped them, and his muscular thighs twitched as the cold set in.

He raised his eyes to Moriarty’s face and said, “May I ask a question, Boss?” After the slight nod, silent, from Moriarty, Sebastian said, “Why me? Why now?”

“You know why,” Moriarty said firmly. “I needed you, and you needed me. Why else?” A faint smile quirked the side of Moriarty’s lips, which then tensed and faded as he took another long look at Sebastian’s body before him. Then Moriarty pushed himself out of his chair, languid like a sleek black cat, and came within a breath of Sebastian, whose nakedness became most apparent then next to Moriarty’s pristine and tailored costume of normality. There was an electricity between them that did not come from the weather, a give and take like dying and killing, a final satisfaction for the bite inside Sebastian. There was just one thing left to do.

Moriarty’s hands were chilled on his skin as the man gripped his biceps and turned them around before pushing Sebastian back into the chair that Moriarty had previously used as a throne. Now it was only a chair.

Sebastian had to look up at Moriarty, the way he had in the black car, and the light from the kitchen haloed Moriarty’s dark head. Sebastian found himself amazed at the beauty of the depth of Moriarty’s eyes, completely black, or so it appeared. He reached out then, without thinking, and brushed his fingertips across the fabric of Moriarty’s suit. There was no smacking hand, no reprimand, no smile. Moriarty took a step forward, so the palm of Sebastian’s hand pressed flat against Moriarty’s stomach, his fingers brushing over the buttons of Moriarty’s suit coat.

“Undress me.”

Sebastian’s eyes met Moriarty’s and then fell down the length of Moriarty’s clothed body. Their roles were reversed now, but Moriarty still held the power. Power that Sebastian had never seen before, power he had never felt before. Now he basked under it, found himself warmed by its stare and proud of its interest in him.

He obeyed without question. His fingers were too large to be nimble, but they were steady as he unbuttoned the suit coat and let the lapels fall open. He sat forward to reach up and push the fabric off Moriarty’s shoulders. He caught the coat before it hit the ground and folded it carefully to avoid wrinkling. He leaned forward, his face not a breath away from Moriarty’s body, as he set the coat on the coffee table, next to his own folded clothes.

The bite inside him was happily eating away at him, and for once he didn’t care. He had something bigger than the bite to keep him occupied now.

Next came the black tie, for which Sebastian tried to stand to reach, but Moriarty gave him a sharp, “Sit.” So he did and instead strained his legs to reach the man’s neck without fully leaving the black leather chair. As the knot came undone, the silk slithering like a soft snake, Sebastian collected it up, rolling the tie into a loose coil and setting it aside.

He paused to think, but no thoughts came to him. None. For once in his life, all his first breaths of hell were not the first things to come to him in an otherwise silent moment. What a blessed silence! Moriarty seemed to indulge him, a bright spark of something that Sebastian wanted to be pride lighting his dark eyes. As he gave up more of his own power, Sebastian felt empowered differently. Empowered to ignore the bite, to ignore the past. To ignore anything that wasn’t his Boss above him. Sebastian had never been so powerful! Rifles were nothing but a crutch for a weak man. Strong men used guns for other things.

“Keep going,” Moriarty said softly, stepping again closer to Sebastian, whose hands were immediately at the waist of the man’s shirt, pulling the tails out of Moriarty’s trousers. A dull clatter shocked and stopped him. A gun had fallen from the back of Moriarty’s waistband. A small revolver, six-chambered black beauty. Sebastian reached down and picked up the gun, opening the chamber to find a single bullet in the last chamber.

Moriarty took the gun from him, spinning the cylinder and pointing the gun off toward the kitchen and pulling the trigger. There was a pop, but no bullet. Then he pointed the barrel of the gun directly at Sebastian’s forehead and said, less softly now, “Keep going.”

Sebastian’s heartrate spiked, and then, as if he were the one with the gun, slowed and slowed until he could count them and time his breaths to match. In the lulls in his body, he unbuttoned Moriarty’s white shirt one by one, from the bottom, revealing the pale body underneath. He glanced up at Moriarty under the body of the gun and pushed the fabric off Moriarty’s shoulders the same way he had done with the suit coat. He folded it, still holding eye contact with the Irishman, and barely flinched when Moriarty pulled the trigger again.

Pop, no bullet. Four chambers left.

“All of it,” Moriarty said, a hint of pride in his voice. Sebastian smiled ever so slightly and pulled Moriarty’s belt from his trousers and then unfastened the trousers themselves. He was working faster now, his heart excited without showing it, and soon he had pushed the black fabric down Moriarty’s hips, letting the trousers pool at the man’s ankles, around his pristine black shoes. He wore black socks suspended by white sock garters that reached to just below the knee. Moriarty stepped out of the trousers without being asked, and Sebastian had to break eye contact to bend over and pick them up and fold them.

When he looked up again, the revolver was back in his face, and Sebastian welcomed the next pull of the trigger. Once again, no bullet. Sebastian smiled broadly now, proud in his own right.

Unlike Sebastian, Moriarty had worn boxer briefs under his trousers. All of it, Sebastian knew, so he bent forward, his mouth hovering over Moriarty’s slight bulge, and tucked his fingers under the elastic waistband, pulling down the fabric and letting his lips hit the cock that was then bare to him.

Moriarty sucked in a quiet breath above him, and Sebastian felt the press of the cold barrel against his temple.

Pop. Still alive. Two chambers left, one of which had the bullet. Sebastian’s breathing hitched and then stilled entirely. He couldn’t breathe for a moment. His mind went nowhere, but his lungs did, and when they returned, he fell back into the chair, staring up at Moriarty with an awed and open mouth.

“That’s very good, Tiger. Leave the shoes.”

Sebastian relaxed into the chair until he realized that Moriarty was moving to straddle him, sitting across his spread legs. Moriarty pressed the barrel of the revolver to Sebastian’s chest, and Sebastian’s cock responded immediately. Moriarty dragged the gun down Sebastian’s body, stopping only at the hard cock that Sebastian could feel pulsing and needing, like the bite that had devoured him.

Reaching down into the crack of the chair, Moriarty pulled out a small plastic bottle of lube. No condom. Sebastian wanted to ask. He didn’t.

Moriarty touched Sebastian’s cock only to spread the lube over it and then, still with the gun against Sebastian’s lower belly, to guide Sebastian into his entrance, which was tight and prepared only by the steel will that Sebastian knew laid under Moriarty’s pale skin. Moriarty’s was a slow descent until he was fully seated on Sebastian’s cock, and as soon as he was, he raised the gun again, nudging open Sebastian’s mouth and then settling the barrel of the revolver on Sebastian’s tongue. Sebastian’s mouth closed around the gun and he sucked it like he would a cock, and as Moriarty pulled the trigger, Sebastian imagined the man coming down his throat, hot and like molten hollow-tip bullets.

Moriarty pulled the gun from Sebastian’s mouth and bent forward to wrap his arms around Sebastian’s neck, keeping the gun pointed at the back of Sebastian’s head now. He rocked his hips against Sebastian’s and moaned into the crook of Sebastian’s neck as Sebastian’s cock brushed against his prostate.

Bucking his hips up, Sebastian tried to give as much as he got, reaching around to kneed the flesh of Moriarty’s backside. He leaned his head back into the gun, into the last chamber, into the bullet that would kill him, and Sebastian accepted his fate. Devoured it. Needed it and wanted it like he had never wanted anything else before.

“Pull it, please,” he begged Moriarty, who sat up enough to stare Sebastian down, his eyes hot and dark and deep and hidden. Sebastian remembered the rules then and said, “Please, Boss. I need it.”

Death and dying are different things. Commander Gregory had died less than a month after Sebastian had been sent back to London. Sebastian had been dying the whole time. But death, death eluded him. From the fan to the pills, death was refused to him every time he begged for it. There was only dying for Sebastian Moran. From the moment of his birth, only dying.

And now was no different. As Moriarty pulled the trigger, Sebastian, eyes closed and breath held and heart stopped, waited for the release that only death could afford him. But it never came. The last chamber was empty. Sebastian slumped back into the chair as Moriarty rode him hard, moaning and breathing heavily and laughing at Sebastian’s dying.

Confused and angry, Sebastian gripped Moriarty’s hips hard enough to bruise and fucked up into the man like an animal, like the animal the man had made him, and he could see the pearly beads of pre-cum leaking from Moriarty’s pale cock. Sebastian was close himself, and he was about to flip them around so he could pound Moriarty properly when the gun clattered to the floor and cold hands wrapped around his neck for the second time that night.

Tighter this time, with intent to kill, and Moriarty’s hips moved faster, bringing Sebastian closer and closer to completion. Small hands cutting off the blood to his head, the air to his lungs. Sebastian’s vision went cloudy, first flashing with white, then fading to black. More pressure, Sebastian gasped or tried to and felt the urge to claw at Moriarty’s hands. He didn’t. He accepted it. He needed it. He would have begged for it, if he could have spoken.

Everything felt on fire, and Sebastian was lit up like lightening, and could all but feel the warm rain on his skin. Touches were thunderous, and long forgotten rifles teased at his groin. The bite returned and Sebastian finally understood what it was craving. The bite craved dying as much as it craved killing, and Sebastian was giving it both at once in such a way that devoured the bite itself, leaving him empty and full, paradoxically, at the same time. What satisfaction! What physical completion! To be all and nothing at once.

He came harder than he ever had in his life just as his lightheadedness became unconsciousness. Moriarty came over Sebastian’s belly and finally released his grip from around Sebastian’s neck.

It was then, with a stilling heartbeat and burning lungs, that Sebastian took his last first breath of hell and found his eternal God, his eternal King, his eternal Boss.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for any mistakes; this is the first mormor fic I've finished in literal years. 
> 
>  
> 
> [ on tumblr](http://www.mormoratorium.tumblr.com)


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